Lacrima did not speak. A vision of a fierce aggressive crowd of hard, hostile, healthy young persons, drilling, riding, shooting, fencing, and dragging such renegades as herself remorselessly along with them, blocked every vista of her mind.
“I hate the Empire!” she cried at last. Gladys had subsided once more into her chair—the little bathing-suit, symbol of our natural supremacy, clasped fondly in her lap.
“I know,” she said, “where you get your socialistic nonsense from. Yes, I do! You needn’t shake your head. You get it from Maurice Quincunx.”
“I don’t get it from anybody,” protested the Pariah; and then, in a weak murmur, “it grows up naturally, in my heart.”
“What is that you’re saying?” cried Gladys. “Sometimes I think you are really not right in your mind. You mutter so. You mutter, and talk to yourself. It irritates me more than I can say. It would irritate a saint.”
“I am sorry if I annoy you, cousin.”
“Annoy me? It would take more than a little coward like you to annoy me! But I am not going to argue about it. Father says arguing is only fit for feeble people. He says we Romers never argue. We think, and then we do. I’m going to bed. So there’s your book! I hope you’ll enjoy it Miss Socialism!”
She picked up the volume from the floor and flung it into her cousin’s lap. The gesture of contempt with which she did this would admirably have suited some Roman Drusilla tossing aside the culture of slaves.
An hour later the door between the two rooms was hesitatingly opened, and a white figure stole to the head of Gladys’ couch. “You’re not asleep, dear, are you? Oh Gladys, darling! Please, please, please, don’t make me bathe with you! You don’t know how I dread it.”